2.2 What if there is no driver installed?

This is a rather difficult question to answer, because it depends on the distribution and version.

If you do not see any network device other than lo: when you execute the command cat /proc/net/dev, you should first make sure there is a valid NIC installed. You can check the identifies of PCI cards (including the ones embedded into the chipsets) using the following command:

This command displays all the PCI devices with lots of details. You should look through the output and see if you can identify a NIC. If a NIC is recognized, it will be identified as such.

It is possible that a server may have a NIC that is not recognized because it uses a chip that is not yet supported. In this case, there are two alternatives.

You can update the kernel and see if a newer version has support for the NIC device.

You can also replace the NIC with one that is supported by the Linux kernel. If the NIC device is embedded in a motherboard chipset, you can usually disable it in the ”CMOS” settings of the motherboard. Then, you can acquire a NIC that is supported by the Linux kernel and install it.